You were so forthcoming with help for Loopy flying that I enjoyed the game even more, and thence bought it.
(The fact that now all I can buy to eat is vacuum cleaner dust is forgivable.)

I am now pondering the universe of perks what has opened up in front of me. In particular, reverse thrust is a tricky one to use without suiciding spectacularly. Any ideas of what to practice in order to learn its secret and magical ways?

Ta,
Rechty

Charlie

06-28-2009, 04:48 PM

Well Mr. Righteous,

I'd go to a server that has no one on it and just fly around with it for as long as it takes you to get comfortable (i.e. not suiciding every 2 mins), then join a pub server and have at it.

Experimenting for the first time in an actual game will probably just annoy your teammates.

DiogenesDog

06-28-2009, 04:57 PM

reverse thrust is a good screw around perk, but I don't think anyone's managed to really kick some ass with it yet.

you never know, though. a month ago everyone thought remote mine sucked, and now people know it wrecks ****. :o

eth

06-28-2009, 05:21 PM

Ive seen 2-3 players who are actually good with reverse, the only one I remember the nick of is Escoteric :P I think he had (biplane) heavy cannon, heavy armor and reverse.

Esoteric

06-28-2009, 06:58 PM

I actually use Biplane/Heavy Cannon/Flexible Wings/Reverse Thrust.

I've been using this setup for weeks and I'm still slightly worse with it compared to my original biplanes setup of heavy cannon/heavy armor/ultracapacitor in all situations except for clean 1v1s. So don't pick reverse thrust because it's the best. If you play it, play it because it's fun.

I started with rubber armor for the first few times of messing around, but after I could fly without bumping into walls nonstop I found flexible wings to be extremely useful.
Reverse Thrust's main issue is that, unlike flying frontwards there is no way to simply slow down. You need to flip your plane over in order to not crash into a wall and flexible wings lets you do that. Practice going from reverse thrusting to flying forward a lot.

MY style of reverse thrusting involves two main things.
1: Getting out of combat quickly and then heading back in. (pure reverse thrust and then a flip to get you flying straight again. You generally can't fight very effectively while actively reverse thrusting, the goal is to be flying forwards again but from a safer location/angle. It can also be used to enter combat in the same way, but I can't say I'd recommend it often.
2:Never letting someone be at your back.If they are chasing you from left to right just quickly (but lightly) reverse thrust upwards so you're stalled out and they're in front of you. You don't want to be flying upwards though, you're just looking to have them be in front of you. This is incredibly useful against mirandas and loopys. Also note that reverse thrust means you can more quickly accelerate out of the stall you've put yourself in. Just give it some juice and then flip.

Other people sometimes use it differently. Beagle (another reverse thruster) uses it to keep distance while taking potshots more often than I do--which isn't bad on open maps, but doesn't fit my playstyle. I'm constantly trying things out with it and there are tons of little cute things you can do with it but those two situations are most of reverse thrust's utility for me. Flying backwards in tunnels while taking potshots at people chasing you is good fun, but incredibly difficult and going forward, shooting, and then reverse thrusting back along the same path is virtually the same to just turning around if you have flexible wings. Beagle uses heavy armor, so reverse thrusting is faster than turning for him.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck if you pursue reverse thrust but would caution that it might best be left until you are already proficient at biplane.

Oh, and this seems as good a place as any to write a plea to Lams for EMP to not shut off reverse thrust completely but instead just drastically reduce its effectiveness. Would moving at, say, 1/4 reverse speed with the reduced turning would in any way dick over EMP-users? EMP should give the loopy a big advantage but it is often a death sentence for someone flying backwards who can't turn around fast enough to not crash into a wall. Loopy in general is already extremely good against reverse thrust, their bullets homing in on evasive reverse thrusters without issue. No reason to make them invalidate it as a playstyle.

gameguard

06-29-2009, 12:49 AM

You forgot about jewbag. He uses the annoying-gay style.

oh and emp disables all acceleraton, so i dont see why it should have an exeption for reverse. Its a pain in the ass for mirandas too.

Esoteric

06-29-2009, 01:38 AM

You can change the direction you're moving when facing forwards while EMPed.

You can not change the direction you're moving when facing backwards with reverse thrust while EMPed.

Case 1: Guy is flying towards wall, is emped. He turns, thus changing the direction of his momentum, and doesn't die.

Case 2: Guy is flying towards wall with reverse thrust, is emped. He can't change the direction of his momentum and can't turn fast enough to face forward to do so. He dies.

I'm not looking for the reverse thruster to be any less of a sitting duck than the forward thruster, but it's unfortunate that they have to die to their own momentum.

gameguard

06-29-2009, 03:34 AM

ic what u mean. If u get emped do you jsut stall out and fly in the direction you were going?

Beagle

06-29-2009, 03:38 AM

Other people sometimes use it differently. Beagle (another reverse thruster) uses it to keep distance while taking potshots more often than I do--which isn't bad on open maps, but doesn't fit my playstyle.

Hey, hey, I take offense to these kind of subtle lies. Don't call me a reverse thrust pussy :mad:

Unless I actually do this automatically and don't notice anymore...

Also, getting scraped by the edge of an EMP blast while you're reversing flat out can be pretty funny. 'Oh and now to turn around and slow down before I hit thBZZTT OH GOD NEROOOOOOW SPLAT'

Kuja900

06-29-2009, 05:03 AM

Hey, hey, I take offense to these kind of subtle lies. Don't call me a reverse thrust pussy :mad:

Unless I actually do this automatically and don't notice anymore...

Also, getting scraped by the edge of an EMP blast while you're reversing flat out can be pretty funny. 'Oh and now to turn around and slow down before I hit thBZZTT OH GOD NEROOOOOOW SPLAT'

Lol Beagle you always rev thrust to safety ;), pansy.

Esoteric

06-29-2009, 05:14 AM

Hahaha, I mean no offense, Beagle. I'm saying that with heavy armor it isn't possible (or it's much much harder) to do more detailed maneuvers. And in situations where I can turn tail and run you just back up. You know what I mean?

gameguard: yah. You're 100% stalled, it's just like you got tossed backwards by an explodet rocket.

Beagle

06-29-2009, 05:28 AM

Hahaha, I mean no offense, Beagle. I'm saying that with heavy armor it isn't possible (or it's much much harder)

Hmm, I dunno if it's even that much harder. I started off with flex wings as it seems the best choice when you first start rev thrusting; somewhere along the line I got sick of being one-shotted by bombers (this is before the bomber ROF nerf) and went for Heavy Armour. I've never felt the need to go back, so I stay with Heavy.

I might just be used to turning earlier when I need to change my reversing direction, but I don't think there's anything you can pull off in Flex I couldn't do in Heavy.

Esoteric

06-29-2009, 06:56 AM

That's an easy one. How about flying across the length of the cave in middle ground while firing potshots? With flexi I can aim down to give myself height and then back to shoot, down for height, up to shoot. And nomatter what you say, I can turn to shoot behind me faster.

I'm not saying it's night and day, I'm saying that I can turn considerably faster when I pick the perk that increases my turning speed.

Beagle

06-29-2009, 08:41 AM

That's an easy one. How about flying across the length of the cave in middle ground while firing potshots? With flexi I can aim down to give myself height and then back to shoot, down for height, up to shoot. And nomatter what you say, I can turn to shoot behind me faster.

I'm not saying it's night and day, I'm saying that I can turn considerably faster when I pick the perk that increases my turning speed.

Oh you can definitely turn faster, I'm just saying, I can still accomplish everything you can with flexi. If I couldn't, I'd play flexi.

Flying alongside the bottom of lostcity is better, though I do love middleground :D

as red as black

06-29-2009, 09:28 PM

Reverse thrusting your self to the top of middleground and balancing yourself while sniping everyone who enters the middle part = epic ratio

Rechtschaffen

06-30-2009, 06:51 AM

I look forward to trying out the reverse thrust properly now I can see some useful/amusing uses.

Considering that we are discussing the biplane - is there any compelling reason to choose dogfighter over recoilless?

jf2l

06-30-2009, 02:10 PM

Dogfighter is slightly has slightly better energy efficiency; that's about the only difference.

The best part about dogfighter/Heavy Cannon is the recoil: If you get stalled onto the ground you can reverse thrust by firing the machine gun. (That's saved my life more times than I care to count)

Beagle

07-01-2009, 07:23 AM

Even with reverse thrust, the recoil saves my life when I get EMP'd and have no rev, but I'm already pointing downwards because I was in the middle of revving out of a dive.